Wake Up Heart
by Solitaire and Xpyne
Summary: Sanzo is badly injured, starting a chain of events no one was prepared to anticipate. With madmen bent on immortality, surfacing desires of the flesh, and an affront against the Gods, it will take a combination of Heaven and Hell to save the world. 58, 39
1. The Desire to Protect

**Wake Up Heart **  
by Solitaire  
Pairings: Gojyo/Hakkai, Sanzo/Goku  
Rating: M, for language, violence, and sexual content  
Disclaimer: Saiyuki and all associated characters are the intellectual property of Kazuya Minekura. I just write them for the sex. :d

Summary: Sanzo is heavily injured, setting off a chain of events no one was prepared to anticipate. Amidst madmen bent on immortality, surfacing desires of the flesh, and an affront against the Gods, it will take a combination of Heaven and Hell to save the world.

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Chapter One: The Desire to Protect

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"_--ku!"_

Rip apart. The tear of flesh, crunch of bone.

"_Goku!"_

Nyoi-bo is a blur of movement, a reassuring weight in his hands, so heavy--and he brings it down on another of his opponents, reducing the body to little more than a gory pulp. His blood rushes in his ears, drowning out the sounds of their screams they _deserved_ it the soundofhisownscreams...

"_Goku, please stop this!!"_

With a gasp, he sat straight up in bed, a hand shooting to his diadem reflexively. It felt as if his skull would split in two. His heart pounded so fiercely, he was sure he would be sick. The world seemed to lurch on its axis for a moment, and he lay back down before he could lose the contents of his stomach.

What... happened?

_Blood everywhere it wasn't enough it wouldn't make up for what they'd done why, _why?_ and he screamed and screamed and_

His head ached and he was too tired to form a coherent thought, but as he sank into the comfort of darkness once more, he still heard that question echoing in his mind, raw with pain.

_Why?  
_

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Hakkai was grinding the pills the town doctor had given them with an almost frightening intensity, pausing in his work only long enough to occasionally check on the kettle he'd rigged over the fireplace to boil. Whatever it was, Gojyo thought, it smelled god-awful.

"Is that for Sanzo, or Goku?" he asked, not because it made a difference to him, but because it was better than sitting here in the tense silence, worrying and watching Hakkai work. Not that he worried about the chain-smoking, abuse-slinging monk. That bastard would outlive them all, he was sure, if only out of spite.

"Sanzo," the brunet answered shortly, but Gojyo didn't take it personally. He knew Sanzo wasn't really what worried Hakkai, either. With a weary sigh, the man set down the pestle and removed his monocle to rub the bridge of his nose. "Whether by luck or skill on Sanzo's part, it's a miracle there were no internal injuries aside from broken bones. If that spear had been on target--"

The half-demon shuddered. "Stop, you're giving me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it. (Damn, when I saw him, I thought for sure...)"

"The greatest damage sustained was probably psychological, but I can't--" Cutting himself short, Hakkai scrubbed at his face wearily. "I wouldn't dare presume."

"Hey, at least he had the good fortune of being unconscious towards the end." Grimacing, Gojyo ran a hand through his hair with affected annoyance. "Man, he's gonna be impossible to live with, when he finally comes around."

'If he comes around,' seemed to hang in the air between them, but neither was going to voice it. Sanzo wouldn't suffer dying just yet--he probably didn't trust them to complete this stupid journey without him.

"But Goku..." Hakkai began with reluctance, putting an end to their dancing around the subject, and Gojyo released a long column of smoke towards the ceiling.

"How is he, anyway?"

Hakkai turned his attention to the kettle and stirred the contents thoughtfully with a frown. "Still sleeping. I went in to check on him a while ago, to see if I'd need to administer more sedatives, but from what I could tell, he was sleeping soundly enough." Removing the kettle from the flames, he set it on the table to cool. "I checked his diadem, too, just to be sure--"

Gojyo waited, and Hakkai shook his head with a grave look.

"It wasn't even cracked."

"That so?" The cigarette had lost its appeal, and he ground it out into the ashtray before lighting another. The ashtray was overflowing, but Hakkai hadn't spared a word to nag him about it all night. Gojyo almost wished he would.

Hakuryuu, seeing his master taking a break, flapped his way across the room to settle himself lightly on Hakkai's shoulder. The brunet raised an absent-minded hand to the dragon's back.

"I'd be lying," he admitted after a moment, "if I were to say the Minus Wave never crossed my mind."

"No!" Gojyo protested vehemently, sitting up straighter in his chair. "If it was that, we'd know, we would'a felt it, too."

"Yes," Hakkai agreed as he pushed himself to his feet, grabbing the kettle and the pills he'd made a fine powder of, "but isn't the alternative worse?"

Gojyo's teeth clenched around the filter of his cigarette, but he could think of no response for that. He didn't like it; he didn't like it, and didn't people sometimes do crazy, horrible things when they--when they _cared_ for someone that much?

Exhaustion was exuded by the brunet's every movement as he headed for the door and Gojyo didn't like that, either. He disliked it even more when Hakkai turned to eye him knowingly before he disappeared from sight.

"There are some sacrifices no one would want made in his, or her, name."

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"Sanzo..." Goku protested unhappily, leaning forward slightly in his seat.

"You won't finish that sentence, if you want to keep breathing."

"But your arm still doesn't work! If there's trouble--"

The blond shot him a death glare, and Goku immediately shut up, though he wasn't happy about it.

"Well, that's why he's got two arms, see?" Gojyo piped up from the back seat. "So when one of em goes dead, he's got a spare." He just barely managed to dodge the bullet Sanzo sent his way. "(Way to prove me right, you shitty priest!)"

"Now, now," Hakkai interjected in an attempt to keep the peace. "Sanzo insisted he'd be able to heal just as well, on the road, as he could have being forced to stay at the inn for an indeterminable amount of time." With a smile at no one in particular, he added, "Though he really is the worst patient I've ever seen."

"Look," Sanzo snapped, "we're on a tight schedule. We don't have time to sit around on our asses, waiting for something that'll happen on its own. The arm is _fine_. **Drop it**."

Frowning, Goku wrapped his arms around his upraised knees and rested his chin atop them. He watched as Sanzo attempted unobtrusively to flex his right hand. The action was sluggish, and the monk grabbed his injured arm with a soft "Tch!" Goku's jaw clenched.

"Oi." Gojyo prodded him with the toe of his boot, and Goku's head whipped around as he prepared to fend off another fight. "Don't worry about it. After the size'a that last group of youkai, it'll probably take em at least a few days to regroup." He grinned. "Hey, we may even make it to the next town before then."

"It's a good-sized one, according to the map," Hakkai agreed.

"Great," Sanzo snorted. "Then they've probably heard of us."

"Ooh, that mean we'll be 'incognito' again?" the redhead quipped. "That's awesome, I just love walking around in a blanket and sunglasses in broad daylight like some kinda vampire..."

"You'll do it," the priest threatened, "or you can go find your own room and board."

"Anyone ever tell you you've got some serious control issues, Sanzo-sama?"

Goku fisted his hands tightly. Gojyo could joke about it all he wanted, but the teen couldn't shake the nagging sense of dread that had settled in the pit of his stomach.

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"Full house." Gojyo sighed. "Why does it seem I can only win when you're not paying the least bit of attention to the game?"

"Hmm?" Blinking, Hakkai's gaze landed on the redhead sitting across from him. "I'm sorry, I was..."

"Staring at Sanzo, yeah, I got that." He plucked the cards from Hakkai's hand and covered it with his own. "You're gonna drive yourself crazy with worry. Go. Go take a bath, get something to eat, anything, but don't sit here beating yourself up."

"Gojyo--"

Ignoring the half-hearted protest, Gojyo leaned over the table and pressed a lingering kiss to the corner of the brunet's mouth. "You haven't slept in over twenty-four hours. Please."

Hakkai's eyes slid shut and Gojyo almost smirked, to see the man's defenses crumbling so easily at a little kiss and a 'please.'

"I'll keep an eye on Master and his Pet," he promised, "and I'll call you right away if it looks like something's wrong."

"...Alright," Hakkai finally conceded, and it was a good thing, too. The bone-deep weariness rolled off him in nearly palpable waves, and Gojyo would hate to have to sucker-punch the guy, just to get him unconscious for a few hours.

"But if anything happens, if there's any change at all--"

"I'll send for you immediately, via homing dragon," the half-demon assured him with a mock salute. From the foot of Sanzo's bed, Hakuryuu kyuued his assent.

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"Shit," Sanzo swore. "We've got company."

Goku immediately sat up straighter in the back seat. He couldn't even smell them yet, but he trusted Sanzo's ability to sense qi before any of the rest of them could; it had given them a crucial few moments' warning on more than one occasion.

"Damnit, Gojyo, I thought you said we wouldn't get attacked again so soon!" he accused as Jeep skidded to a halt and they all climbed out.

"What're you blaming me for? I said 'probably'!"

"This does seem amazingly resilient of them, doesn't it?" Hakkai inquired. "And only two days after such a large-scale attack." He politely pretended not to notice Sanzo's wince as the man pulled his right arm from the make-shift sling the three of them had bullied him into wearing.

"Everyone's just begging to die," the blond growled, and flicked the safety off his gun.

"Sanzo, I still think--"

"And that's the problem right there, isn't it, you stupid monkey?"

Goku shut his mouth with a snap and silently fumed. Fine. Let Sanzo see who would come to his rescue, when he was getting his ass-and-one-working-arm kicked.

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Half an hour of solitaire. Check on monkey-boy. Go to the can. Sneak to the kitchen to grab a beer (or six). More solitaire. Peek in on Hakkai--damn straight, he'd better be sleeping. Back to Sanzo to change his bandages, because it was a rare opportunity for a free show, and it beat the hell out of waiting 'til he was awake and could fight it tooth and nail. More fucking solitaire, and that boring-ass book Hakkai had been reading was actually starting to look pretty good.

When Sanzo woke, shooting up in bed with a harsh gasp like that of a drowning man, it scared the shit out of him. Abandoning his cards, Gojyo stood from the table so quickly, he almost sent his chair toppling.

"Goku," the priest rasped, and it didn't sound like he was fully awake, he was fumbling with the sheet that covered him as he tried to get out of bed. "Where's...fucking animal, I'll--" He didn't seem to realize where he was, but had managed to push himself into a sitting position despite the obvious pain he was in, because Sanzo was just _that_ stubborn.

"Whoa, whoa there." Gojyo was across the room in a second, and shoved the blond back down with a hand in the center of his chest. Sanzo struggled against him, grabbing his wrist with a surprisingly tight grip for a man who'd been near-comatose for the better part of three days.

"Goku," he tried again, his voice raspy from disuse, "his limiter--he was...goddamn bloodbath." His eyes clearing somewhat, he glared up at the redhead. "Let me the fuck up." Sanzo jerked at the arm holding him down, but Gojyo wouldn't budge. "What happened? Did Goku lose it? The limiter, I need to--"

"No," Gojyo started to explain uncomfortably, "it never broke, Sanzo. Hakkai--"

"Hakkai put it back on," came Goku's voice suddenly from the doorway, and both men turned to stare at him. "It just got knocked off, but Hakkai grabbed it and was able to get it back on."

Confused, Gojyo released Sanzo and took a step back from the bed with a frown as Goku quickly bounded over. "What the hell? That's not--"

"It's _fine_ now," Goku insisted, and Gojyo might have classified the look he got as threatening, if the kid hadn't looked so scared and desperate at the same time. "It's fine, see?" he repeated, dropping to his knees at Sanzo's bedside and pushing back his hair to reveal the golden diadem, clearly intact. "I'm really, really sorry, but it's fine, now, Sanzo, honest--"

The priest lifted a pale hand and set it atop the boy's head with a sigh, and if Gojyo didn't know any better, he'd swear Sanzo's expression was one of visible relief. Except no one had any reason to be relieved, Goku had **not** lost his limiter and was _lying_ about it, and if he'd gone ape-shit once that meant it could happen again, didn't it? It meant any of them could, maybe.

"Where's Hakkai?" Sanzo asked, and Goku definitely flinched.

Dragging a hand through his hair, Gojyo jerked a thumb next door. "Sleeping. But I'm not gonna--"

"Forget it," the monk told him, "it can wait," and Goku's shoulders un-tensed slightly. "I feel like shit. He'd better have left some painkillers."

Goku's eyes were glued to the splinted fingers of Sanzo's left hand as it slid from his hair to rest on the mattress.

"Um, yeah," Gojyo said, snapping out of his thoughts. "Hold on, I'll get em..."

"You really are a moron," he heard Sanzo berate the kid quietly, once his back was turned. "Your limiter was 'knocked off?' Tch. They weren't even assassins, just a bunch of riled-up _perverts _looking for a convenient outlet. And you--"

"I know," Goku murmured with chagrin, and that much, Gojyo figured as he held the bottle of pills in his fist and listened while pretending he wasn't, was genuine. "I messed up, I let my guard down and one of em must've snuck up on me an'--"

"No shit, you screwed up," the priest told him coldly. "You're of no use to me if you allow yourself to get distracted every goddamn time you think I'm in danger! I never asked you to protect me."

"Sanzo--"

"What would you have done, if Hakkai hadn't been able to stop you? I won't always be around to clean up _every fucking mess_ you make."

Gojyo returned with the pills and a glass of water, before this conversation had a chance to really get ugly. "Here," he said, thrusting them at the blond. "And for Chrissake, cut the kid some slack."

Psychological damage, Hakkai had suggested. If Sanzo remembered any of it, he was playing it off like a Grade A bitch. But that scream, when they had finally-- Gojyo shuddered at the memory of it.

"Mind your own goddamn business," Sanzo snarled, and Gojyo only managed to keep from really giving him a piece of his mind by reminding himself how pathetic the bastard was right now, all bruised and beaten up. 'Extremely defensive' was an understatement.

With a scowl--because Sanzo would never suffer others worrying about him--Gojyo turned his back. "C'mon, Goku. We can come back when he's slept off most of the bitchiness. Let's get you something to eat, huh?"

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This was wrong.

It had felt wrong from the beginning. There was an intent to kill here, yes, but it didn't seem driven by the madness that often resulted from the Minus Wave. They were...terrified for their lives, which didn't make sense.

The force was well-organized, but smaller than those which were usually sent after their party, and the constituency wasn't normal, either. Usually the groups of youkai they came up against, the ones sent from India, consisted of the general 'cannon fodder,' as he'd once put it to Sanzo. Occasionally, these were led by one youkai with specially developed powers: summon-able qi weapons, commonly, or hypnotism, or illusion. But this force... There was so much ambient qi floating around, it was difficult for Hakkai to pinpoint, but surely they couldn't _all_ possess such powerful--

"Shit!" Gojyo cursed behind him, dodging the razor-sharp edge of a staff thrust recklessly in his direction. "These guys sure get points for effort. Killing em's almost too easy, but they just keep comin' back for more!"

He raised Shakujou over his head in a sharp arc and let the chain reel out, the crescent blade chopping limbs and the closely surrounding trees indiscriminately. A shower of small qi projectiles like firecrackers hit him from his left, and Gojyo held up his arms to shield himself, even as Hakkai erected a barrier.

'_Almost too easy,'_ Hakkai thought, and his heart stuttered in his chest.

"Gojyo," he murmured anxiously over his shoulder when the redhead pressed to him, back to back, "don't you think there were many more attackers, earlier?"

"Well, we killed a lot." Shakujou's blade sang through the air.

"But we've no idea where Goku and Sanzo are. They've separated us."

"They can't be far," Gojyo reasoned. "Just a little while ago, I heard a couple of em ranting about fellow demons siding with a youkai-killing priest. Morons," Gojyo spat vehemently. He sent a kick to one attacker's chest, and Hakkai buried an elbow in the face of another who'd moved in when the man was distracted.

"But I haven't heard even one of them mention the sutra. And listen. Do you still hear Sanzo's gun?"

Straining his ears, Gojyo listened for it over the sounds of the cursing and howling. "No. (Fuck!)"

"They're not trying to kill us, they're just keeping us busy! I think we made a terrible mistake. We have to find the others before--"

A scream ripped through the air, making the hairs at the back of Hakkai's neck stand on end. He met Gojyo's eyes, and they were wide and horrified.

It had been Sanzo's voice.

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When Goku snuck back to the room an hour later, Sanzo was asleep again, which was good. Hakkai always said your body did its best healing when you were asleep and Sanzo...had a lot of healing to do.

As quietly as possible, he grabbed one of the chairs from the table and set it beside the bed, so he could watch over Sanzo.

He and Gojyo had eaten in the third room, the one that had been for him when he was recovering, and it had been really quiet and awkward, but it was better than sitting down in the dining room with all the people.

The town wasn't all that friendly towards youkai, Gojyo had explained--tensions ran high with an all-youkai town so close, one that could potentially go kill-happy any day--so Hakkai had given the story that they were humans traveling through the area when they were attacked by territorial youkai. It probably didn't help much, playing off the bad blood between the two towns, but they hadn't had a choice. Sanzo was in serious need of professional medial attention, and there was nowhere else they could get it.

"What happened back there..." Gojyo had started, and Goku slowly set down his chopsticks, staring into his bowl but not really seeing it.

"I don't know," Goku whispered. "You saw what they did to Sanzo. I just...I couldn't let them get away with it." He fisted his hands under the tabletop. "Sanzo never did anything to deserve that," he growled, and told himself not to remember it, not to picture it in his head. "Sanzo's a Sanzo! That means he's really, really special, and they--" He was cutting crescent-shaped marks into his palms, and tried to take a deep breath.

"I don't know that I'm in much of a position to say who deserves what," Gojyo finally drawled, leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling as he took a deep pull off his cigarette. "Maybe we were wrong, maybe those guys were--probably both--but if it had been _me_..." With a sigh, he ran a hand through his hair and laughed a little, darkly. "I'da done the same goddamn thing."

Goku took Sanzo's hand, mindful of his broken fingers, and curled his own around it. Sanzo didn't wake, which was also good, cause he was extra nasty when he was hurt, like he had to make up for the fact that his body wasn't working properly or something. The desire to touch Sanzo's hair, to push it from his face and reassure himself that everything would be okay, was a physical ache like a knot in his chest, but Goku didn't want to push his luck.

Instead, he tightened his hand marginally around Sanzo's and let his head rest on his own arm, propped over the back of the chair.

Because everything _would _be okay. He wasn't a monster.

He _wasn't_.

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Damnit_.

Goku sent another of his attackers skidding through the dirt, having knocked him unconscious, but not killing him. Sanzo and Gojyo would pitch a fit, he knew, but something about this group of youkai seemed...off. They didn't seem crazy--well, anyone who took them on with such low-level powers was crazy--but they weren't "crazy" crazy, at least Goku didn't think so.

Six of them had closed around him in a loose circle, and every so often one would charge at him, or shoot some kind of qi weapon at him, but other than that they weren't really _doing_ anything, except yelling at him and calling him a traitor, and Goku had heard it all before.

"Blah blah blah, don't you guys ever stop whinin'?!"

Sansekkon snapped back into place as Nyoi-bo and he jammed one end against the hard packed dirt, figuring he'd vault over the bunch of them. He had a bad feeling about this fight and he wanted to find Sanzo or Hakkai, because they could probably feel it, too, and would know what to do.

Leaping into the air, he sailed over them, and because he was struck so strangely by the desperate determination, the _despair_ in their faces when they lifted them to watch him, Goku didn't notice the qi barrier until it threw him back.

"!!"

He went crashing toward the ground and turned it into a roll--he hadn't thought anyone could do that but Hakkai!--landing on his feet and 'scff'ing backwards through the dirt with the momentum of it until he slid to a stop. He saw now that a few of them were working together to create the barrier, it didn't look easy, and another youkai stepped into the center of the circle, drawing a qi-arrow through his summoned bow.

"Just stay right where you are!" the youkai shouted at him, his voice trembling with emotion as he drew his arrow back further, and his hand was shaking so badly, Goku had to wonder at the fact that he didn't drop it. "We'll kill you if we have to, so just be still! Soon enough you'll be free, we'll all be free, and we'll be able to live without fearing each day will be our last--!"

Goku scowled. "What th' heck're you talking--"

To his left, about a hundred meters away, a section of the forest suddenly exploded in light.

The pierce of the qi-arrows that sunk deep into his thigh and arm as he turned to race towards Sanzo were hardly felt, like splinters.

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He waited until the monkey was dead asleep--which was so easy, it was almost a crime, once he'd let the boy climb into the bed with him, given the provision "Stay on your own side or I'll kill you"--and until he heard the kappa leave.

Gojyo had probably left to buy more cigarettes, if the stench of that inferior brand coming off of him when he had been in the room was any indication.

Easing himself off the mattress carefully, Sanzo hissed as his various wounds stretched and burned. On the bed, Goku's face twisted into a frown in his sleep but thankfully, he didn't wake.

"Fuck," Sanzo swore softly, then laughed mirthlessly at the irony. Yeah, fuck was right. And it was almost funny, until he tried to stand, and his legs immediately gave under his weight, sending him crashing to the floor, nearly blinded with pain.

His knee; he vaguely remembered the bastards stomping on it while he was down. In addition to dislocating his shoulder, breaking a few ribs and all the fingers of his left hand, using a knife to flay the insides of his--Sanzo decided he didn't want to remember any of this right now. It was lame that Hakkai sucked at healing broken bones.

And he was naked, he realized now with annoyance. Great. He supposed it only made sense, those youkai had made such a fucking mess of him, there probably hadn't been much left of his clothes, anyway, and anything remaining would've had to have been removed so Hakkai or a doctor could treat his injuries.

A flash of anger, fierce and red-hot, burned through him suddenly, then was gone nearly as quickly. So everyone had to know his business, big fucking deal. There was nothing he could do about it, now, and all of the youkai were dead, so it didn't matter either way.

Sanzo slowly and laboriously pulled himself to his feet again with the help of one of the wooden chairs at the table and grabbed his robe, pulling it around him--which proved a difficulty in itself when he could only move one arm, and not so well at that. He figured he'd stick close to the wall and sort of hop his way to the bathroom so he could take a piss and decide from there if he felt up to rousting Hakkai so he could get some goddamn answers.

Except that this hurt like hell, too, but it beat dragging himself across the floor on his fucking elbows, so he grit his teeth and bore it.

It took him ten minutes just to make it across the room, and he'd never been more thankful for an in-suite bathroom. Once he was in there he had a bad flashback and nearly threw up, but his body was just being stupid--probably rebelling against all the stress he was putting on it, so soon--because there was nothing in his stomach to throw up. Through the wall, he heard the door to the next room over open, then shut, and knew Gojyo had returned.

Fine. It was harder for them to lie to him together, anyway. The idiots never could get their stories to corroborate.

The look on Gojyo's face when he shoved the door open and just about fell into the room was shocked and a little defensive, and Sanzo figured it had something to do with the way the redhead had been sitting over Hakkai, holding his hand like that as the qi-healer slept.

Even so, Gojyo was fast enough that Sanzo didn't actually hit the floor, and by the time Gojyo was prodding the door shut with his foot, Hakkai was struggling into a sitting position and fumbling for his monocle.

"Sanzo? What in the--?"

Before he knew it, the two of them were maneuvering him into the recently vacated bed like a fucking invalid, and he shoved their hands from him, irritated.

"I want to know what happened," he managed to ground out, despite the screaming ache in just about every one of his muscles, "and I want to know **now**."

Gojyo and Hakkai exchanged a look.

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"Don't touch him!!" Goku screamed when he found the group of them gathered around what could only be Sanzo. Half of them were tangled in the coils of the sutra, partially restrained, but it wasn't disintegrating them, why wasn't it working?!

And of _course_ it had all been for show, because there were at least a dozen of them over Sanzo, grabbing and clutching and scratching, even as Sanzo cursed them and fought against them.

"Sanzo!" he yelled fearfully, but before he could take a step towards his guardian, the five he'd left behind caught up to him and knocked him to the ground.

"Hold him!" one of them shouted, and though Goku flung them off with ease, they were slowing him down, they were keeping him from Sanzo!

"Bastards!" Sanzo spat, and the curse was followed by the sharp smack of fist on flesh.

"We'll teach you to come looking for trouble in our homes," one of the youkai hissed. "We won't forgive you!"

It was the rip of cloth, and Sanzo's renewed grunts of pain, which spurred Goku to throw off the last of his captors, and he swung Nyoi-bo in a circle above his head until there were five bodies on the ground.

"**Stop it!**" he yelled again, and he punched and kicked his way to the center, and then Sanzo was there on the ground, bleeding and bruised and just out of reach because they were trying to hold him back, now, and the two youkai holding Sanzo's legs apart glared up at him, terrified yet defiant, another one of them was holding a staff--no, a _spear_--and he drew back his arm and

"_**No!**_" he shouted, but his voice was drowned out by Sanzo's scream.

Goku's world went red.

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"They were just trying to protect their homes, their families," Hakkai explained. "I'm not excusing what they did, but if history has taught us anything, it's the desire to protect something which can bring out both the best and worst in us."

Gojyo scrubbed at his face with his hands, clasped them with nervous agitation, and pressed his forehead against them.

"I suppose they'd heard we were coming west, as much as anyone else has. We're not exactly low-profile." With a weary sigh, Hakkai reached up to finger his limiters. "At one point, the town had been much like any other, before the resurrection attempts set off the Minus Wave: humans and youkai living together. When the wave hit...some of them lost their minds, and the rest of the youkai made the difficult decision to take care of the problem, themselves."

With the scrape of wood, Gojyo got up from his chair and went to stand at the window across the room. Sanzo glared at his back disapprovingly but didn't say anything, thankfully. Hakkai continued.

"However, it wasn't enough for the humans, they wanted _all_ youkai out of the town, and there were lynchings. The youkai fought back, but there were the obvious physiological advantages of demon anatomy, and soon the humans were in the minority. Those that weren't killed were run out of town, or fled on their own. This was about a year and a half ago, and since then, other sane youkai from nearby have escaped there for sanctuary. They've managed to exist together peacefully, they claim."

Gojyo was pacing now, and Sanzo wished he'd just sit the fuck down, or leave, or something; it was making him nauseous. He finally spoke up.

"So let me guess: when they heard the youkai-killing priest and his cohort were coming, they flipped."

Looking down at his clasped hands in his lap, Hakkai sighed again. "They must have decided they had no choice but to fight. The strongest and most powerful of them volunteered for what they probably knew was a suicide mission, and--"

"And you know all this _how_?"

Hakkai's eyes flicked briefly in the half-demon's direction. "We managed to piece together the story based on what the town surgeon told us, and what we were able to drag from the single surviving one of our attackers."

"Fucking morons," Sanzo muttered, and he'd never wanted a cigarette so badly in his life. "If they'd just talked, instead of trying to make a goddamn shish kebob of me--"

"How were they supposed to know we would listen to reason?" Gojyo suddenly exploded, smacking his palm against the wall. "If you ask any youkai, we **are** the bad guys! Christ..."

The monk made as if to lever himself from the bed with a grimace of pain. "Don't you dare start with your bleeding heart shit--"

"Stop it!" Hakkai commanded, standing suddenly from his chair, and with a glare like that, even Sanzo was slightly taken aback. "What happened, happened. Regretting it or not, it won't turn back time. The most important thing now is deciding what should be done, if anything, about Goku."

"I'll tell you what that heartless bastard's gonna want to do," Gojyo retorted, furious, "he'd rather just put a bullet through Goku's brain and be done with it, wouldn't you, you sonova--"

Sanzo lunged from the bed, though it was more distance than he could hope to cover to the other side of the room, the state he was in.

"Sanzo!" Hakkai admonished, even as he reached out to restrain the man.

"What would you know about obligations?!" the blond snarled, struggling against Hakkai's grasp and making new blossoms of red seep through his robes. "You've run away from every fucking thing in your life you couldn't handle--"

It was difficult to tell who was surprised more by the slap, Sanzo or Gojyo, but the look on Hakkai's face promised he would do it again in a heartbeat.

"Please," Hakkai told the priest politely with cold fire in his eyes, "keep your opinions regarding other people's lives to yourself."

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By the time they arrived, it was already a massacre. The air was heavy with the stench of blood.

_Goku's limiter_, was Hakkai's first thought when his eyes landed on Sanzo, unconscious and spread eagle on the ground, frighteningly pale, clothed in more crimson than white. At his right, Gojyo stumbled towards a nearby tree for support and retched.

"I need to get in there and try to stop Sanzo's bleeding as best I can," he told the redhead worriedly when he returned to his side, his hands shaking, "but Goku will never let me near him, the state he's in now."

Summoning Shakujou, Gojyo seemed to get a hold on himself by sheer force of will alone. "Well, we'd better fucking try."

And then Gojyo was stepping forward, ready to serve as a distraction, and hopefully live long enough that Hakkai could keep Sanzo from kicking it.

Goku had turned on him in an instant, splattered from head to toe with his enemies' blood, and Gojyo would have sworn he had a feral animal's eyes, when he stopped screaming long enough to drag in a ragged breath and Jesus Christ, there was _recognition_ there.

"Guys," the kid croaked, his voice raw, and Hakkai froze in his tracks where'd he'd been cautiously approaching from the other side, "you gotta--you gotta heal Sanzo, you gotta--!" He cut himself off, bearing his teeth in a snarl, and swung Nyoi-bo around behind him hard enough to send the youkai sneaking up on him crashing into the trees with what had to be a shattered ribcage and a broken spine because, shit, bodies weren't supposed to _bend_ that way.

Hakkai moved in quickly, Goku stepped aside to give him more room, and Gojyo was just starting to hope things might be over, that any of their opponents left alive would have the sense to run as far and fast as they fucking could, when Goku suddenly went completely still, cocking his head as if listening and his ears weren't elongated, and the blood on his hands wasn't dripping from razor-sharp claws, it _wasn't_, Gojyo reminded himself, but it didn't really lessen the fear.

"Goku," he began warily, "what're you--"

"One's getting away," the brunet growled, and the kid was so fast these days, Gojyo might never have caught im, if he hadn't already suspected he was going to take off after whoever it was.

Shakujou's chain snapped around Goku, pinning his arms to his sides.

"_No!_" Goku howled. "Let me go! He's getting away, I won't let him--he's getting **away**!"

Gojyo had to dig his heels in and pull with all his strength just to keep the stupid monkey from tearing the last youkai apart with his bare hands and shit, he was glad Goku didn't quite possess the power he did in his demon form, because then they'd all be screwed.

"Cut it out, you moron!" he grunted, straining with effort. "It's over! You slaughtered just about every one of em!" He didn't know how much longer he could hold the kid, and if Goku was even semi-coherent, he had to at least attempt to appeal to his sense of logic. "If one got away, then he'll tell any others what a fucking bloodbath this was, and none of em'll ever try it again!"

Goku went slack against the chain so fast, Gojyo stumbled back a few steps before he could regain his balance.

"Yeah..." Goku agreed, falling to his knees, "you're right." He wavered there, his eyes losing focus, and Nyoi-bo dropped from his fingers. "Hey, Hakkai. Make sure Sanzo doesn't die...kay?" And Goku fell forward into the dirt, unconscious.

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"Marry me."

Fatigue had made his hands unsteady as it was, so he very nearly dropped the tea pot at that. "Excuse me??"

"That was _awesome_," Gojyo sighed appreciatively, and he had the glazed look to his eyes of a man lost in fond memory.

"As gratifying as taking Sanzo down a peg may have been," Hakkai admonished wryly, "I hardly think it merits a marriage proposal." Pouring himself a mug of tea, he poured one more, and nudged aside Gojyo's empties meaningfully as he pushed it towards the man.

"Yeah, but the look on his _face_..."

"I shouldn't have done that. Sanzo will have out, in the end," the brunet warned with a shake of his head.

"Well, I still say **someone** had to do it." Dropping into the chair across the table, Gojyo reached good-naturedly for the mug, but only to warm his hands. He wasn't big on tea, but constantly reminding Hakkai of this for the past four years had seemed to have little effect. Gojyo had given up, and had even started to learn some of the names of the different kinds--completely unintentionally, he maintained.

"Don't you think it was a bit odd, though: Sanzo's behavior?" Hakkai suggested thoughtfully, staring over the rim of his mug at the door Sanzo had dragged himself through, stubbornly refusing help. The two of them had been angry enough to let him do it.

At the redhead's incredulous expression, Hakkai elaborated. "Sanzo has started healing extraordinarily quickly."

Gojyo leaned heavily over the table on his elbows. "Uh, in case you didn't catch it back there, the dude can hardly walk," he reminded their qi healer, jerking a thumb back over his shoulder.

"With the extent of the injuries he sustained, he shouldn't have even been able to get out of that bed," Hakkai insisted. "And the worst of the bruising has already faded from his face."

"I'm certain the great Sanzo-sama will be happy to hear that."

"Gojyo, I'm serious."

"So am I. That guy's vainer than I am. He's just more secretive about it. ...Look," he added _sotto voce_ when Hakkai didn't seem to want to drop it. "I know what you're thinking, so stop it." Reaching across the table, he laid a hand over the brunet's wrist. "It wasn't like we had much of a choice. Our options were pretty--"

"A choice about what?" Goku demanded from the doorway, and from the grim set of his mouth, it was clear he'd heard the whole thing.

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"It's bad," the town surgeon told him bluntly, but then, Hakkai had already known as much. From the corner of his good eye, he could see Gojyo pacing back and forth in front of the window, and the redhead's fingers kept making aborted movements toward the breast pocket of his jacket and his cigarettes.

"We did what we could," Hakkai ventured, "but the bleeding--"

"Femoral artery was sliced on both sides," the older man interrupted, gesturing to the angry scars with a brown, weathered hand. "You were smart to heal those up first, but there's a lot of soft tissue damage."

Hakkai nodded, struggling against exhaustion and the migraine threatening to split his head in two in order to pay attention. He'd worked fast to patch up the most severe of Sanzo's injuries with his qi, but by that time he had already wasted a fair amount of it on the youkai sent to distract them.

He should have caught on faster, damnit. Looking back now, it was so painfully _obvious_.

"Those bastards sure gave his kneecap hell. He's lucky there was no fracturing or dislocation," the doctor continued gruffly. "Two cracked ribs, at least one more probably bruised; six broken fingers, left shoulder dislocated--which you did a nice job of setting. There's also blunt force trauma to the back of the skull, so you'll have to look for signs of a concussion, if he manages to pull through." The man shook his head. "I'll be honest, though. At this point, it doesn't look good."

Pressing his lips into a thin line grimly, Hakkai was glad Goku was not awake to hear the conversation. Across the room, Gojyo violently kicked over one of the wooden chairs, and he winced inwardly.

Hakkai watched the shallow, labored rise and fall of Sanzo's chest, then glanced toward Goku where the teen lay on a small cot across the room. He hesitated, fearing he already knew the answer to what he was about to ask.

"What do we have to do?"

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tbc...


	2. Uncool

Title: **Wake Up Heart **  
Author: Solitaire   
Pairings: Gojyo/Hakkai, Sanzo/Goku  
Rating: M, for language, violence, and sexual content

Disclaimer: Saiyuki and its associated characters are the intellectual property of Kazuya Minekura. I just write them for the man-sex. :p

Notes: For purposes of this fic, the events taking place occur shortly **before** the Even A Worm arc. Also, a huge thanks to Xpyne for betaing and moral support, and without whom I would have been far too lazy to pull this off, lol.

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Chapter 2: Uncool

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Sanzo moved down the hall with the support of the wall and it was slow, painful going, but he needed two seconds of quiet so he could _think_, and he certainly wouldn't get it if he went back to his own room, not with the chimp in there.

The veranda out behind the inn was empty, thankfully, and by the time he'd eased himself onto one of the benches--and _fuck,_ that hurt--he was short of breath and his wounds were throbbing again. He'd managed to grab his gun and cigarettes from Hakkai's room, at least, along with Gojyo's lighter, and he was quick to light one of the Marlboros, though it took longer than expected with the shaking of his hands.

Curiously, Sanzo lifted a hand before his face. It trembled as he held it out palm-down, despite his best efforts to still it, and he had to attribute it to three days' worth of nicotine withdraw. Because he wasn't _that_ pissed that Hakkai had struck him. Because he hadn't really come out here in fear he'd take that anger out on Goku. With a growl, Sanzo clenched his fist.

It would be pointless to yell at Goku--satisfying, maybe, but ultimately pointless. There was a difference between consciously removing his diadem and the seeming lapse of sanity Hakkai had described. Hakkai hadn't said the words, but he knew they were all thinking it. If that was the case, he wouldn't hesitate to prove Gojyo right, to put a bullet right between Goku's eyes. It would be for their safety, for the sake of the mission, and if Goku needed a grave, Sanzo would be the one to dig it for him.

Taking a long drag off his cigarette, the blond stared out over the railing towards the woods. If there was one thing he'd learned over the course of this journey, it was that any youkai might eventually succumb to the Wave's effects, true, but when the individual was strong-willed there would be _signs_ before the madness took hold, damnit, and it was irreversible--not there one moment and gone the next. And Goku wasn't a youkai, not really. Not a typical one, at any rate. But Sanzo couldn't let this incident slide.

With a snort, he dropped his spent cigarette to crush it beneath his sandal. As if it could ever be as simple as telling the stupid monkey: "Never do that again." If Goku was overprotective to a fault, Sanzo had no one to blame but himself. He was the one who had too often allowed the boy to trail after him like a loud, annoying shadow, who had encouraged him to act as an unofficial bodyguard when it suited his purposes, and hadn't their first meeting with the kappa been just like this?

A scuffed pair of boots entered his field of vision as he was considering lighting another Marlboro, and he cursed to himself when they remained there.

"Excuse me, but are you...are you the most honorable Priest Sanzo-sama?"

With a weary, ill-humored scowl, he dragged his gaze upwards. "Who wants to know?"

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"Oh--Goku."

He felt Hakkai tense up slightly beneath his hand and frowned. They'd agreed to be careful about displays of affection where Sanzo might see, because if the monk was able to pretend he didn't know what was going on between them, then he didn't have to pretend he was supposed to say something about it.

It'd been sort of an unspoken assumption that were Goku to see, he would blab to Sanzo and ruin it for all parties involved, but Gojyo was no dummy. Hakkai thought they would set a _bad example_ for the kid.

Which was ridiculous. If any of them were running the risk of 'turning' Goku gay, it was Sanzo.

Leaving his hand right where it was, he turned an irritated glare on the monkey. "Don't you ever knock?"

"A choice about _what?_" Goku repeated, annoyingly persistent, and Hakkai sighed.

"Please come inside and close the door." And then Hakkai was standing and ushering Goku into his vacated chair, "How are you feeling?" he asked, and the kid blinked stupidly at the abrupt change of subject.

"M fine."

"No dizziness?" their resident qi healer inquired as he poked and prodded. "Headaches? Nausea?"

'Craving for human flesh?' Gojyo almost wanted to add, but it would have been half-serious, and living with Hakkai had warned him against jokes that were Not Funny.

"_No_," Goku insisted impatiently, shying away from the hands, "and what did you guys do to Sanzo?"

_So much for distraction techniques,_ Gojyo thought, and plunked his untouched mug of tea in front of the kid. Time for guilt.

"You insensitive bastards are making it really hard on Hakkai, you know," he drawled, and that certainly got Goku's attention. "He's been busting his ass just making sure you and His Holiness keep breathing, and you _both_ come barging in here, playing Twenty Questions--"

"It's alright, Gojyo," Hakkai interrupted quietly, and Gojyo still didn't think it was, but he knew when arguing wouldn't get him anywhere. "I think Goku should know. After all, this involves him, too."

"It's cuz I didn't get to Sanzo in time, isn't it?" Goku asked resignedly, already guessing the worst, but Hakkai raised a hand to stop him.

"Goku, if not for you, Sanzo would have died. Not only did you defend him after he had fallen, but your own blood--"

He was stopped short by the familiar retort of Sanzo's gun from outside behind the inn, and with a shared look the three of them were out of their seats before the sound had faded from hearing.

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Predictably enough, Goku was the first one out onto the porch, and the other two of them arrived just in time to see him kick the knife out of reach. The young man kneeling on the ground, clutching his right hand, glared up at him hatefully, and Sanzo thumbed back the hammer of his gun.

"You shouldn't have come here," the monk told him slowly.

It didn't take Hakkai long to realize what Sanzo must have, even before he opened his mouth, that the male about their age was a youkai, though he must have been wearing limiters in order to sneak into town.

"What else could I do? My family's dead because of you, you bastard!" and Goku moved to stand in front of him as he pushed himself to his feet, but Sanzo waved his charge back.

"We were defending ourselves against an unprovoked attack," Gojyo snapped, "so don't get all high 'n mighty on _us_!"

"It was pre-emptive," the youkai snarled back, reaching up to tug his cap more firmly over his head. "Were we just supposed to wait until the demon-killing priest and his pals showed up in the middle of our town?!"

"That's not--!"

"What did you hope to accomplish here?" Hakkai interrupted quietly, drawing the young man's attention. "We are deeply sorry for what happened to your family and fellow townspeople, but surely you didn't think you could come here alone and have any good come of it?"

"He heard they'd managed to leave the Sanzo priest in bad shape," the blond guessed, casually pulling out a cigarette and lighting it, "and thought he could sneak in here when I was alone and finish me off, is that it? Pretty pathetic plan, if all you've got with you is that knife." Blowing a stream of smoke in the man's direction, Sanzo curled his lip.

"I'll never see my brother or my father again, or my hus--or my spouse. I'll _never_ forgive you!" There was the threat of furious tears in his voice, but while Sanzo remained unaffected, Goku was the one Hakkai found himself eyeing warily.

"At the very least, you're outnumbered four-to-one," Gojyo tried to reason. "Just go home," and while Hakkai knew it was unintentional, the sympathy in the half-demon's voice only served to further anger the other male.

"I'd rather fight you all and die like a man than be sent off with my tail between my legs," he sneered, and he lunged toward Gojyo with his bare hands when Goku stopped him with a palm to the chest.

"Please," Goku told him, his voice nearly inaudible and his eyes downcast, "don't do this."

"Didn't you hear me?!" the young man growled lowly, and there was no mistaking the tears that dripped down his chin. "I don't have a home to return to, not any more."

"Goku, stop it," Sanzo ordered. "There's nothing you can do. You," he added, addressing the other male. "If you want to die so badly, come on then."

Hakkai's eyes widened as the man tossed his gun aside in a gesture that was pure provocation, "Sanzo!" he exclaimed with alarm, but their self-proclaimed adversary had already snapped the chain of the necklace he was wearing under his shirt, and the piece of jewelry clattered to the ground as the tips of his ears elongated and his fingernails grew to long claws.

"It's holier-than-thou humans like you who're the real monsters!" he spat, and he stepped towards the priest, claws extended, when Goku blocked the movement again with his body.

"Get out of my way!" the youkai threatened, but there was fear in his eyes, and even he must have heard from the sole survivor of that fight about the things Goku had done.

Goku remained silent but immovable, and when the other lashed out to claw at the brunet's face, Goku didn't prevent it.

"What the hell, monkey?" Gojyo demanded as beads of crimson welled up across the teen's cheek, and became bright lines of blood which dripped onto his collar.

"I'm sorry!" Goku cried suddenly, his eyes squeezed shut and expression pained, "I didn't want to, and I'm _sorry_, but it was your family or mine!"

The youkai stuck out again, this time with a fist, and still Goku did nothing to defend himself. "Why?! Why do you side with him? A human who kills us just because we're demons? Don't we deserve to live, too?!"

"Goku, move!" Sanzo snapped.

"Hit im back, at least!" Gojyo shouted at the brunet, exasperated.

"I'm not gonna hit a girl!" Goku shot back, and this time, when the claws came at him, he grabbed his assailant by the wrists and held fast.

"A _**girl**_?!"

The youkai struggled violently at these words, and when the cap was knocked from her head, it was indeed a young woman spitting and cursing at Goku.

"Bastard!" she hissed. "Don't go easy on me because I'm not a man!"

_So that was why she disguised herself, and Goku must have smelled it right away_, Hakkai hardly had time to think before she had kneed her captor in the groin, and while Gojyo would have probably had enough experience with females to know it was coming and avoided it, Goku dropped like a stone, clutching his midsection.

"Idiot!" Sanzo grumbled, moving to laboriously push himself to his feet.

"Hey, come on," Gojyo protested, his protective instincts kicking in, and he stepped in front of the girl, facing the monk. "She just--"

"Gojyo, look out!" Hakkai yelled, and Goku had reached out in an attempt to stop her from retrieving the knife, but his reflexes were still dulled by pain, and by the time Hakkai was near enough, she'd already sunk her blade between his ribs from behind.

Time seemed to freeze for Hakkai as the redhead stood there, a half-pained, half-incredulous look on his face.

"...You've _gotta_ be kidding me," Gojyo muttered before he crashed to the floor.

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"Moron!!"

The sharp crack of the paper fan against Goku's skull echoed across the porch and Hakkai politely averted his gaze as he and the inn keeper's son carried Gojyo inside.

"Ow, Sanzo, what th' heck was that for??" Great, now his stomach _and_ his head hurt, and he felt like crap about some of the things that girl had said, so if Sanzo was just gonna yell at him, he'd rather follow Hakkai and see how Gojyo was doing. Or better yet, he'd go back to bed so he could pull the covers over his head and wait for tomorrow, because today mondo sucked.

"What did you think you were doing, huh?" the priest snapped back, and he brought his arm up in preparation for another blow, "Are you trying to--"

Goku reached out and gripped Sanzo's wrist. "Cut it out, you're gonna make your injuries worse," he warned, and when Sanzo's bad knee finally buckled under his weight, Goku pulled that captive arm over his shoulder.

"Brainless fool," the blond continued to mutter fiercely under his breath as he sagged against Goku, the still healing damage his body had incurred finally catching up to him, and Goku could smell fresh blood under the man's robe.

"I'm only tryin' to help," he retorted defensively as Sanzo scoffed, moving sluggishly to stash the fan back up his sleeve.

"You never _think_ before you do," the other male berated him through clenched teeth, and Goku frowned at the pained expression on his face. Once Hakkai'd made sure Gojyo would be alright, he'd have to ask him to take another look at Sanzo--stubborn jerk never should'a gotten out of bed in the first place, and now he'd been attacked again--

"--get into messes like these," Sanzo was saying angrily, and Goku hadn't been paying attention, so he wasn't sure if Sanzo was talking about him or himself. "You _lied_ to me."

"I didn't want you to worry over nothin'," he mumbled, refusing to look at Sanzo as he carefully helped him in from the porch, and just past the doorway Sanzo tugged away to glare down at him with narrowed eyes.

"'Nothing?' The way I heard it, you practically tore those youkai limb from limb--that's not your usual fighting style."

Swallowing thickly, Goku lowered his head so he couldn't see Sanzo through his bangs, and Sanzo couldn't see him.

"I dunno what came over me. I just--I just couldn't stand there an' watch them hurting you and not do something about it!" he insisted, his voice low and uncertain. "It's stupid, but it's like...Kougaiji's guys are after you cuz of the sutra, but these guys, they wanted to hurt you because they were mad and scared, and the looks on their faces were like...it was like they were sayin' that you _deserved_ to die and I was stupid for tryin' to stop them, and--"

He hadn't even realized he was shaking with anger, his hands fisted hard enough to make the tendons of his wrists ache, until Sanzo's hand came to rest atop his head. He bit his lip, wondering if Sanzo had decided he needed a thicker limiter after all, because he _had_ been getting more powerful, and for a while now, hadn't he? Maybe too powerful. Maybe dangerous-powerful.

But Sanzo's hand only lay there, warm and heavy against his skull, and when the blond finally spoke, it wasn't what Goku had been expecting.

"Stop it," he ordered curtly. "Shitty things happen to people all the time, whether they're deserved or not. It does no good to get worked up over them, because that's just the way things are." With a weary sigh and a gentle shove to the boy's head, he pulled his hand back. Goku risked a glance up at him, but Sanzo was staring out into the darkness past the porch with a considering frown on his face.

"No matter how self-righteous you get, there will always be someone out there twice as self-righteous who disagrees with everything you've ever believed."

"Sanzo?"

The monk turned to face him once more, and that frown deepened. "You--" but he cut himself off with a disgusted shake of his head. And when Sanzo slung his arm over his shoulders once more, Goku found he was able to breathe easier than he had all day.

"So you're not gonna kill me?" he wanted to know, only half joking as the two of them carefully made their way down the hall to the priest's room.

"Do you want to die?" Sanzo shot back challengingly.

"No."

"Then I guess I won't."

"...That's it?" he finally had to ask, his gaze flicking to Sanzo's profile, and if it was this easy, why couldn't he help still feeling like he was--what was that expression Hakkai had used before?--waiting for the other shoe to drop? His arm tightened unconsciously around the blond's waist.

"That's it."

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When he next opened his eyes, Hakkai was hovering over him with that damned mother hen expression on his face. He hated when he was the cause of that look.

"Hakkai, m fine," he slurred, still half asleep, and there was something prickling at the back of his mind telling him it wasn't such a good idea to sit up, but he tried it anyway and that was when he remembered what happened.

"Uuughh," he groaned painfully, bringing a hand around to clutch at his ribs, and his fingers encountered one of Hakkai's trademark 'too tight, I know, but that's to remind you against being such an idiot in the future' bandages.

"That chick," he asked suddenly, "did she--"

"She fled as soon as the commotion had drawn the inn keeper's attention," Hakkai assured him. "Fortunately, you provided enough of a distraction that it didn't occur to him to send someone after her until it was too late."

"Always glad to be of service to a pretty lady," he joked. And because, despite the slightly passive-aggressive manner in which his wound had been dressed he was expecting at least a little coddling, it didn't quite register at first when Hakkai sat back, looking relieved, and asked:

"Do you think you can get into Jeep on your own without too much trouble?"

"Whu--who's--_what_?" Gojyo demanded. He was an injured man, here. Where was the love?? With a grimace, he forced himself upright. "If that prick Sanzo-sama can't wait one more day--!"

Hakkai stood to gather their bags, already packed and sitting by the door, and shook his head with a rueful smile.

"If it were up to me, I wouldn't have Sanzo leaving his room for at least another week yet. However, I'm afraid the choice is out of our hands; the management apparently doesn't take too kindly to armed scuffles on the premises."

The pain was making his mind a little fuzzy--wondered if he could get some of whatever those pills were the doc had given them for the monk--so it took a couple seconds for one and one to make two, and by then he'd already thrown his legs over the edge of the mattress.

"They're kicking us out?! But we've got injured party members here, damnit! --Ow!"

"Please take it easy," the brunet admonished as he returned to Gojyo's side. "I'm afraid my energy reserves are still a bit too depleted to completely repair the damage, but the blade grazed your lung. You wouldn't want it to collapse, now would you?"

"...That could happen?" he inquired nervously.

"It's possible," Hakkai agreed. "And of course there'll be no smoking until you're completely healed. Just to be safe."

Heh. He liked how Hakkai managed to make a threat sound like a suggestion. As if they both didn't know the second he tried to light up before Hakkai declared him one hundred percent fit, he'd be strung up by his--

The door opened without warning and Gojyo was reminded that the goddamn monkey seriously needed to learn some manners, was about to let the punk really have it on the topic of common courtesy, when he saw the _both_ of them standing there in the doorway together.

Well, well. _Some_thing must have happened while he was out, 'cuz Mr. I'm Too Good For All Of You himself was leaning heavily on the kid's shoulder to support his weight--too proud for crutches to the end, huh, you bastard?--and Goku no longer had the 'guess I'll go eat some worms' sulk on his face. Gojyo had opened his mouth and was about to make an instigative comment along the lines of 'Did you guys kiss and make up?' when Sanzo beat him to it.

"If you two are done with the old married couple routine," the blond grouched, pausing to glance over his shoulder, "I'd like to get out of here before the mob arrives."

"There's a **mob**?"

"Ah ha, it's a figure of speech, Gojyo."

After a parting glare from Sanzo, he watched the monk hobble out of sight towards the lobby with Goku's help, then shot Hakkai a questioning look. Snatching up the redhead's pack before he could reach for it, Hakkai made a helpless gesture of incomprehension.

With a frown, Gojyo raked a hand through his hair. "Well _damn_."

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"Sanzo," Hakkai suggested as they were tossing the last of their things into the jeep, "with your injuries it may be best if you stretched out in back with Goku."

Digging his heels in, the blond abruptly withdrew his arm from around the teen's shoulder and stood as straight and stiff as Hakkai imagined his wounds would allow.

"I'm fine," he insisted with a scowl, and Gojyo made a rude noise from the other side of the vehicle.

"You're gonna _sit_ on that ass?"

This, of course, set Goku off. "How bad is it?" he wanted to know, shooting Sanzo a worried frown, and he was clearly irritated that he had yet again been the one left out of the loop, even if it wasn't by design.

"None of your damn business," Sanzo told him.

"Whatever. Let em, Hakkai," the redhead jeered, easing himself in back with an arm gingerly around his ribs. "Soon enough, he'll be _beggin'_ to trade."

The priest settled himself stiffly up front, and Hakkai wasn't going to pretend he hadn't seen the grimace that passed over his face.

"Sanzo, are you absolutely certain you--"

"For fuck's sake, stop nagging me, Hakkai!"

The brunet bit back the retort that formed and jerked on Jeep's gearshift a little harder than intended.

"Suit yourself," he replied with a cheerfully strained smile as he stepped on the gas and that was that, because whatever Sanzo said, went, and even the gods couldn't convince Sanzo otherwise when he got like this.

"What the hell are you doing?" came Gojyo's voice from behind him, and Hakkai glanced in the rearview mirror to watch Goku start a bit guiltily. "...Were you _sniffing_ him, you little weirdo??"

"No!" Goku returned hotly, but he did certainly look sheepish, and he shrunk back in his seat a little when the blond glanced over his shoulder to glare at him suspiciously.

"What, then?" Gojyo continued, enjoying pushing the teen's buttons. "You expect me to believe **you** have a _**cold**_?"

"Shut the hell up!" Goku snapped, kicking Gojyo in the leg. "Don't project your perviness on'ta me!"

"Ooh, big word there, chibi-chimp. You been studying flashcards?"

"Don't _call me that_, you--"

"If I have to move in order to kill you two," growled Sanzo with a vein throbbing at his temple, "you're really going to regret it!"

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It was time for him to shape up. Sanzo and Gojyo were injured, and Hakkai was exhausted from healin' the three of them; it was up to him to pull his own weight, now.

He'd set up Sanzo's tent and bedroll for im first thing, then proceeded to help unpack the rest of the baggage from Jeep, gather wood for a campfire, fill their canteens and a pot for Hakkai down at the river, and even catch a couple slow, fat fish while he was down there--which ended up being...trickier than he'd thought it'd be. He was even gonna take first watch tonight _voluntarily_.

So when he had finally dragged himself back to camp, tired but determined not to complain, realizing his tent had gotten left behind in the rush to leave town was the last straw.

"C'mon," he whined, hovering crouched at the open flap of Sanzo's tent, "you're the one who kicked me outta the room and wouldn't let me make sure I had all my stuff! It's your fault, so you should share, you stingy monk!"

Sanzo, resting with his good arm folded behind his head, didn't bother opening his eyes, but rolled his cigarette in his mouth 'til it stuck up at that 'you're pissing me off' angle.

"What part of 'die' do you not understand?"

"You're still wounded," Goku reminded the man, trying a different tactic, "and what if somethin' happens in the middle'a the night? It'd be better to have someone close--"

"Hunh!" was Sanzo's highly incredulous response, and this time he did open his eyes, only to glare and shove Goku from the entrance of his tent with a boot to the boy's face.

"_Denied!_" Gojyo declared loudly from across the clearing where Hakkai was starting dinner, as Goku rocked back onto his ass in the dirt. Pushing himself into a standing position once more, he scowled at the jackass-kappa.

"Shut up, you stupid--"

"Goku," Hakkai interrupted helpfully, "you can take my tent until we get to the next town and can purchase you a replacement."

He brushed off his pants, shook the dirt from his hair, and decided he could probably use a bath after the last couple'a days they'd had. "Thanks, Hakkai, but I'm not gonna make you sleep outside."

As the teen shuffled his way over to check out what Hakkai was cooking, Gojyo waggled his eyebrows with a grin.

"Who said he's gonna be sleeping outside?"

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_A sponge bath_, Sanzo thought with disgust, _get real_. Damn, but Hakkai was a manipulative bastard.

"Here, Sanzo, stand still a sec." Goku frowned in concentration as he carefully helped wrestle him from the various slings and girdles Sanzo had been forced into to keep the mending bones immobile, his robe, leathers, and finally the pair of jeans Hakkai insisted he shouldn't be wearing until his other wounds healed.

The man just didn't understand. While wearing nothing under his robes had been fine at Chang 'An, it wasn't practical for the kind of shit they dealt with on a daily basis on the road. Like hell he was gonna to pull an up-skirt moment in the middle of a fight.

"Oh, man..." Goku's voice trailed off as he got a good look at what was under the bandages. Blunt fingertips brushed the back of his thigh and Sanzo hissed.

"Don't _touch_ it, idiot!" he snapped, smacking the boy upside the head. "Go away, I'm not so injured I can't wash myself." The brunet backed off obediently, thought reluctantly, and Sanzo was able to breathe a little easier. "Go entertain yourself, monkey," he muttered dismissively, and Goku shrugged, rubbing at his skull where Sanzo's palm had connected.

"Okay. Just gimme a holler when you need to me to do your back and redress your bandages," Goku told him, and Sanzo sent him scurrying off with an exaggerated scowl and a threatening lift of his hand.

He hated bathing in fucking cold rivers out in the middle of nowhere where an enemy could ambush them at any moment, but he hated being filthy more. The water was freezing when he lowered himself carefully, but it did numb the fire that ran up his thigh to his ass, so he couldn't complain. Luckily for Goku, when he dove on in, he was far enough downstream that he didn't splash the monk in the process.

"C-cc-cold!" he exclaimed with chattering teeth when he finally broke the surface. Retard.

Sanzo began to wash himself as well as he could with one working arm and wondered with annoyance how much this little fiasco had set them back. Hakkai had said he'd been out for three days. Yesterday had been the fourth, and there was no telling how much time they might have wasted at that inn if they hadn't gotten kicked out of town. Today had been spent almost entirely on the road, but Hakkai had been so obviously driving slower and making more frequent stops that they'd made crap time.

Goku had finished his own perfunctory bath and begun doing laps to warm himself, but it looked as if the laps now had given way to merely floating on his back, a foot braced against one of the larger rocks in order to keep himself from getting pushed downstream.

With a snort, Sanzo watched him float there, naked and completely unself-conscious. To look at him now, one would never guess at the power his body contained, kept in check--maybe just barely--by the diadem around his head. It was hard to believe that behind those wide eyes, that stupid grin, lurked something so...mindlessly feral.

_Right_, Sanzo thought as the teen lazily stroked his torso and scratched at his stomach, _as if this idiot is something to be afraid of._

Goku's hands encountered and lingered at his nipples, and Sanzo rolled his eyes; and maybe he was staring now, but he told himself it was only because he envied Goku's easy ability to lose himself to his cares so completely, and he found himself calling out to Goku to get him to (stop) come over and help him finish washing.

Goku jerked guiltily and sank below the surface with a flailing of limbs, but Sanzo made sure he was looking away. Not as if he took a malicious satisfaction in embarrassing the moron. Not at all.

He waited for Goku to wade his way over to him, then thrust the bar of soap at him. Thankfully, it was brisk and efficient, though Sanzo did find himself leaning into the touch the slightest bit when Goku moved on to his hair. The weakness irritated him and he pulled away.

"Alright, I'm done," Sanzo groused, so Goku dumped water over him with the pot from dinner. It was getting dark and cold now and he was shivering, "_All right_," he repeated ill-temperedly, shaking the water from his hair, and Goku squawked as he leaned heavily on the boy's shoulder in order to haul himself to his feet.

He had to submit to being bundled up, rubbed dry, re-bandaged and re-girdled and it chafed--literally and figuratively--but coming down here had exhausted him, and at least he got to smoke while Goku did a fair, if less skilled, imitation of Mother Hen Hakkai.

"Aren't you done yet?" he demanded for the third time in as many minutes, because damnit, he was falling asleep here on his feet.

"Done," Goku finally affirmed, looking ridiculously proud of himself, and Sanzo pulled on his robes with an exasperated noise.

"Hey, wait up!" Goku called as the priest began to limp back towards their camp, and he scrabbled to collect the rest of Sanzo's clothes, the cooking pot and their toiletries.

"_Finally_," Gojyo bitched once they reappeared, but Sanzo summarily ignored whatever smartass comments came next and managed to shove Goku off so he could crawl into his own tent.

"'Bout goddamn time, make us wait all night, why don't you?" came the kappa's muffled griping from outside as he and Hakkai took off towards the river. He ignored that too--whiner--as he fell onto his sleeping bag, which he suspected Goku had padded with extra blankets.

"Good night, Sanzo," he heard indistinctly before he lost consciousness.

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"Mmm," Hakkai murmured with a smile against the back of Gojyo's neck, "maybe we should have saved the bath until later.

"Screw that. Do you know how long it's been since I've been able to...get you alone?" Gojyo gasped, arching into the man behind him, and Hakkai lifted his thigh a bit higher.

"Too much?" he questioned softly, his nose buried in the half-demon's hair as he gave another careful thrust.

"Fuck, no," Gojyo groaned, and reached back to grip the brunet's hip as if to keep him from leaving. "I can--ahh--do it like this, lying on my side..."

"I always appreciate your flexibility as the situation dictates," Hakkai teased. Shifting as much as their positions would allow, he dropped wet, sucking kisses along Gojyo's neck to his shoulder, and watched avidly over the curve of that shoulder as Gojyo palmed himself.

"Your nipples, Gojyo," he reminded the other man breathlessly. "You do have two free hands, which is more than I can say for myself." Hakkai tightened his fingers in the lush mane of Gojyo's hair and spread his thigh just that slightest bit more in order to more effectively drive his point home.

Moaning throatily, the redhead shuddered against him. "I love it when you talk dirty," he joked when he could finally speak once more, but obediently licked his thumb and first two fingers to toy with one of the hardened nubs.

"Hakkaaaai..." he whined as the brunet halted his thrusts to grind his hips in a slow circle.

"I didn't say to stop," he admonished gently, leaning in his run his tongue lovingly over Gojyo's scars.

"Fuck," Gojyo hissed, tugging at his own nipple harshly as he began to stroke himself in earnest. "You're so..." The rest was lost in a groan as he fingered the slit of his erection, and Hakkai sucked at his earlobe. A full-body shudder ran through him and into Hakkai, and he was making that almost inaudible whine in the back of his throat that aroused the brunet to no end.

"'So' what?" he prompted with amusement, though he himself was hanging on by a thread at this point.

Gojyo didn't answer, but turned over his shoulder his capture his mouth in a wet kiss. "C'mon, Hakkai," he whispered against the man's lips with a wicked grin. "Fuck me like you mean it."

Hakkai moaned aloud at that look, dimly seen in the dark of the tent through one good eye, and he withdrew just enough to push back in forcefully, aiming to graze Gojyo's prostate.

"Alright," he panted with a smirk threatening to tug at his mouth as the redhead's body went taut against his. "But please don't say you didn't ask for it."

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"_What _about_ my blood?"_ he had finally asked after finishing a double shift on watch and waking Sanzo briefly to force the blond to take some more pain pills. Goku had been practically dead on his feet by that point, but he knew it was probably the best chance he'd get to talk to Hakkai alone, and it was worry and a nagging sense of curiosity which had made him hesitate at the mouth of his borrowed tent and blurt the question.

"_A blood transfusion,"_ the other man told him, and after listening to him explain what it was and how it worked, Goku accepted the fact that Hakkai wouldn't have agreed to it if he didn't think it was their best option, but he still wasn't sure how he should feel about it. At least now he knew why Sanzo smelled different--smelled darker and richer. Smelled like _him_.

"_Why me?"_ he'd wanted to know, because he would have thought his blood, out of the three of theirs, would be the most dangerous inside a human. If his blood turned Sanzo youkai, he'd never forgive himself--but he'd take a youkai Sanzo over a dead Sanzo any day.

Hakkai said it was because he wasn't really a true youkai, because he was the only one whose body could tolerate the donation of so much blood, and because of something called 'antigen compatibility' that Goku wasn't sure he would have been able to follow even if he'd been one hundred percent awake.

But he did understand that it had to be him. _His_ blood and no one else's could have saved Sanzo, and the thought sorta secretly made him proud. His blood and Sanzo's blood, together in Sanzo's veins, running through Sanzo's lungs and heart and fingertips.

He just hoped it didn't do anything..._weird_ to Sanzo.

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tbc...

Man, they can be such dorks sometimes. :luff luff:


	3. Expect the

Title: **Wake Up Heart **  
Author: Solitaire  
Pairings: Gojyo/Hakkai, Sanzo/Goku  
Rating: M, for language, violence, and sexual content

Disclaimer: Saiyuki and all associated characters are the intellectual property of Kazuya Minekura. I just help them explore their not-so-deeply repressed homosexual desires. :3

Notes: For purposes of this fic, the events taking place occur shortly **before** the Even A Worm arc. Also, many thanks to Xpyne for allowing herself to be distracted from real work and betaing, even if this time I had to offer manual labor in exchange! TAT

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Chapter 3: Expect the...

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"...What?"

It seemed Sanzo was slow in coming awake fully, but that was nothing new. Soon enough he would be barking at them to get in the jeep and stop wasting time, so Hakkai resolved to enjoy it while it lasted. Gojyo, on the other hand, was quickly becoming frustrated.

"I asked if you _slept well_. Because _I_ sure did."

"...Okay," Sanzo responded eventually with the bleary-eyed expression of one who didn't quite understand yet couldn't be brought to care. Gojyo threw up his arms in disgust.

"I told you it was still too early in the morning to try to get his goat," Hakkai reminded him. "Of course, you could always blame it on the pain medication, if that would make you feel better."

"Shuddup," the redhead grumbled moodily.

Hakkai smiled consolingly, and wondered how long it would be before Sanzo noticed Goku was shoveling a little more rice and fish into the man's bowl for every bite Sanzo took.

Two minutes and forty-five seconds. A record, maybe, but by then the rest of them had long finished, anyway, so at least the appearance of the paper fan didn't interfere with anyone's breakfast but Sanzo's, and Goku made quick work of the leftovers.

Gojyo began to pat himself down for his pack of cigarettes out of habit before remembering they'd been thrown out, and at that point Sanzo was finally awake enough to make a deliberate show of enjoying his own morning smoke.

"Shall we get going?" Hakkai suggested in hopes of preempting the imminent exchange of unpleasantries, and it was with a wistful look that Goku handed over the empty rice pot.

Jeep had quite helpfully transformed without having to be asked, but Sanzo made no move to climb inside as the rest of them packed up their gear.

"Problem?" Gojyo wanted to know, his tone a bit snide, but, Hakkai reminded himself, because of his own injury he had already relieved the half-youkai of any obligation to give him and Goku a hand. If Gojyo insisted on helping in order to gain a moral high-ground over Sanzo, well, then that was plain stubbornness.

The priest didn't rise to the bait, though, and he continued to stand there staring at the vehicle, looking as if at war with himself over something. Finally, without a word, Sanzo climbed into the back seat.

"Well?" he finally demanded, stretched awkwardly along Gojyo's usual half of the seat with his unbound arm folded over his chest, and Hakkai stepped on Gojyo's foot as a warning to keep his mouth shut, at least until they were on the road.

Sanzo's scowl, on the other hand, wasn't enough to discourage Goku's relieved grin.

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Sanzo had dozed off, but not before changing position about fifty times and complaining about _everything_. Gojyo made a comment under his breath about the pain meds finally being good for something, and though he wasn't stupid enough to say anything out loud with Sanzo within smacking distance, asleep or not, Goku secretly agreed. Man, was Sanzo ever cranky today. Just because he was frustrated about being injured didn't mean he had to take it out on the rest of them!

"--a tough spot," Hakkai was saying quietly to Gojyo. Goku shifted uncomfortably under Sanzo's dead weight and pricked up his ears.

"You mean the fact that our Fearless Leader is out of commission for an indeterminate period?" the redhead scoffed.

"Well," Hakkai hedged, "several weeks, at any rate. The broken ribs will take the longest to heal. Knowing Sanzo's inability to sit idly by, I'd give it three to four weeks, if he keeps the chest girdle on."

"But you fixed a lot of the damage, didn't you?" Gojyo insisted. "(A month is a helluva long time to put up with Mr. Pissy-pants back there!)"

Their qi healer shook his head. "Mending bone isn't my specialty, but I imagine I was able to cut Sanzo's recovery time in half."

_Four weeks_, Goku thought. That was a long time to be busted up. Years ago, back when he was a kid and before they'd known Gojyo and Hakkai, Goku had gone with Sanzo on a mission to recover some old treasure that'd been stolen by some bandits, holed up in an abandoned pagoda in the mountains. There were more bad guys than they'd expected, things got messy, and the next thing Goku knew, he was chasing a trained monkey across the roof in order to grab the weird gourd that Sanzo had said was the treasure.

Seven stories was a long way to fall, but he'd gotten the gourd and only a couple cracked ribs for it. Of course, back at the monastery, he'd been shoved into bed and not allowed to move too much for about two weeks until he was fully healed, and even _that_ had practically been torture. To make things worse, Sanzo refused to talk to him that entire first week.

"His hands should be ready to be un-splinted in another week," Hakkai offered, and the redhead lifted his finger in a 'whoop-de-do' gesture.

"Wouldn't want his trigger finger to get rusty, would we? Not with three such convenient targets so close by."

"But the most important thing," the brunet continued with a stern glance at both Gojyo and into the rearview mirror where he caught Goku's eye, "is not to over-stimulate him. It would be dangerous enough after such a large transfusion of human blood; in light of the fact that it's Goku's, we really have no idea what the full consequences might be."

Gojyo turned slightly in the front seat, and with an air of doom hanging above them, he and Goku shared an incredulous look. Sanzo? Take it easy??

Yeah, 'cuz **that**was gonna happen.

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"Goddamn it, let me out!"

"I'm sorry, Sanzo," Hakkai called over his shoulder, "but I'm afraid that's impossible."

"Twenty-seven!" Goku shouted gleefully amidst the chaos from somewhere behind Sanzo. Once this journey was over, if he never heard the words "die," "Sanzo party," and "hand over the sutra" ever again, it would be too soon.

"Thirty!" Gojyo countered, and jerked Shakujou back with a grunt. "Thirty-four!"

"So help me, Hakkai..." It was a shit strategy, cutting their manpower in half so Hakkai could maintain a barrier over the jeep and keep him trapped here! Of course, the other two idiots didn't seem to mind a damn bit.

"Thirty..._nine_," the monkey called as his foot connected solidly with an opponent's face.

Sanzo thumbed back the hammer of the gun in his right hand--which was no mean feat with his index finger splinted--and his middle finger tightened fractionally on the trigger. "Hakkai," he growled lowly, quickly losing patience. He needed to get out there and...fight, dodge, shoot, _move_.

"Forty-five!"

"Sanzo," Hakkai returned evenly, and though he didn't look back, the steel underlying his voice gave the blond a good enough idea of what the man's face looked like in that moment. "I'd hardly let you engage in deadly combat before you were fully healed, and have all our efforts to reach this point gone to waste."

With a noise of disgust, Sanzo turned his face aside. So that's how it was going to be?

"Sheesh, how many more _are_ there?!"

Moving forward in the back seat of Jeep, Sanzo lowered his gun over Hakkai's left shoulder, causing the brunet to glance up at him in surprise.

"When I say so, lower the barrier."

Hakkai didn't answer, but narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the last wave of youkai, and it seemed they'd finally noticed their party's vulnerability. They were definitely converging on his and Hakkai's position.

"Fifty--Sanzo?!"

"**Now**."

Hakkai's qi barrier dissipated and Sanzo took his five shots: three of the youkai nearest the jeep, one to which Gojyo had been just about to deliver a killing blow, and one right behind Goku.

"Gah!"

"_Hey!_"

The barrier shimmered then snapped back into place, blasting a few more demons, and Sanzo swung his arm back sharply to smash the butt of his gun against the skull of another who'd been sneaking up from behind. The youkai went down hard and the blond winced, grabbing his upper arm. Damn, still stiff from disuse.

"_What?_" he demanded, when he looked up to see the three of them frowning at him over the sea of bodies.

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"Don't tell me he's still sore about being tied up?" Gojyo muttered under his breath, shooting a furtive glance over his shoulder at the monk across the clearing.

A bullet ricocheted off the ground between him and the kid where they squatted to pitch the last of the three tents, and he and Goku scrambled back with curses. Guess that answered _that_ question.

He almost made a sly comment about bondage being a form of foreplay before deciding against it; he didn't need Hakkai on his case about getting Sanzo "worked up." Heh, of course that particular phase naturally led to thoughts of--

"Ow! What the hell, you stupid monkey?"

"Cut it out with that totally pervy grin, you letchy kappa!" Goku scowled.

"You're just mad that Sanzo refused to be tent-buddies with you," he leered at the brunet superiorly.

"At least I don't hafta be **your** tent-buddy. I feel sorry for Hakkai."

"I think Gojyo's the one you should be sorry for," Hakkai suggested with a mild smile as he passed them, carrying clean bandages for Mr. Congeniality.

"Why?" Goku wanted to know, confused.

"Because he's got bare feet like ice cubes," Gojyo offered with a smirk that he knew the chimp would find untrustworthy.

Sanzo made a disparagingly doubtful "hn!" noise in the back of his throat. Right on cue, Goku's eyes narrowed with suspicion.

"How are your injuries?" Hakkai inquired as he approached the smoking blond where he was slouched against a tree. Sanzo shrugged his good shoulder and glanced away disinterestedly as Hakkai's hands began to glow.

_Ungrateful ass_, Gojyo thought without venom while he watched Hakkai stoop to probe the man's knee with his qi. Sanzo was still limping a bit, but as of the afternoon, he'd stopped letting Goku act like his human crutch. Of course, Goku had taken to hovering two steps behind Sanzo and getting himself yelled at every five minutes instead, but the kid seemed to take it in stride.

"My fingers," he heard the blond mutter. "It's damn inconvenient," and Gojyo was willing to bet it was. If anything, having only one working hand must've made it hard to take a piss, ha.

"I'll take a look," Hakkai conceded, rolling up his sleeves, "but I can't make any promises."

A quick glance in Goku's direction told Gojyo he wasn't even pretending not to watch, either, and Sanzo started emotionlessly at his own fingers as Hakkai used his qi.

"What is it?" Sanzo demanded sharply when the other man made that little shocked face.

"The bones... They seem to have completely healed themselves already," Hakkai mused with something like wonder.

"Wha--in a week?" Goku piped up incredulously as Hakkai worked on removing the splints from Sanzo's fingers. "No way!"

Sanzo carefully flexed his left hand, gazing down at it with a strange expression.

"Well?" Hakkai prompted.

In response, Sanzo's gun appeared abruptly from out of his sleeve and he squeezed off three shots in quick succession. The first two knocked the tent stakes from Goku and Gojyo's hands, while the third hit dead on the single flimsy pole they had managed to get upright, and they turned to watch speechlessly as it went flying into the bushes behind them.

"...A little stiff."

"Looks like that shoulder's healin' pretty nicely, too," Gojyo congratulated the rotten priest with false cheer. If Sanzo was fit enough to be an ass, then he was fit enough to pitch his own goddamn tent!

Hakkai didn't say anything, but frowned thoughtfully as he checked the state of the rest of Sanzo's injuries.

"Amazing," the brunet remarked, shaking his head to himself. "Sanzo's shoulder is nearly healed--even his ribs are much less damaged than the last time I checked them, and that was only a few days ago."

"Enough," Sanzo finally snapped, pulling away from Hakkai's hands. "What you _mean_ is my wounds are healing much more rapidly than they should be."

"I wouldn't go that far," the other man protested. "I had considered--hoped, even--that so much of Goku's blood running through your body would allow you the benefit of his accelerated healing. I just hadn't expected it to work quite to this extent!"

"It's not hurting him, is it?" Goku asked suddenly. "--Healing so much faster than he's supposed to?"

"Nothing I've seen so far would suggest it, but I suspect it's certainly putting a strain on Sanzo's energy reserves."

Gojyo laughed. "So you're saying priesty may give the monkey a run for his money, come meal time?" This was just too funny!

"Keep talking," the blond advised him. "I seem to have a few extra bullets here I'd gladly bury in your thick skull."

"There is that possibility," Hakkai agreed, "but I was thinking more along the lines of this being even more reason for Sanzo not to push himself too hard."

"Fantastic," Sanzo muttered.

Ignoring the comment, Hakkai dusted his hands with a satisfied smile and took a step back. "Shall I get started on dinner?"

The monkey jumped to his feet with a whoop. "Food!"

Gojyo stood as well. "I am **not** setting that thing up a second time," he insisted, glaring at the monk as he pointed to the canvas on the ground.

"'Second time' would imply you were successful a first time," Sanzo scoffed.

"Um, guys?"

"We set up the other two! And since your fingers aren't broken any longer, _princess_, you can set up your own this time!"

"That'll be difficult, after you've lost such important pieces."

"Guys..."

"You jackass, you're the one who had to show off with your damn gun!"

"Guys!"

"_What?_" Sanzo growled, exasperated, and Gojyo whirled around.

Goku held up two skinny pieces of metal which it took the redhead a moment to recognize as the tent pole. Or what was left of it.

"It's alright, Sanzo," Hakkai assured the man cheerfully. "You can share my tent with Goku."

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There were _reasons_ why he had protested this so vehemently in the first place. With Goku's elbow in his face and Goku's knee digging into his thigh, those reasons weren't difficult to pinpoint.

It was always like this--and if it wasn't stray limbs, it was snoring or sleep-mumbling the names of his favorite dishes, or the fact that the monkey radiated body heat like a fucking furnace. Goku was making _himself_sweat, Sanzo could smell it. Could smell Goku beneath that, sharp and musky and unbathed after today's fight, the little cretin, and unbidden came the memory of Goku floating in the river yesterday, touching himself. All that golden-brown skin and lazily shifting muscle.

"Sanzo," Goku muttered sleepily, smacking his lips, and Sanzo gave the brunet a good hard shove, irritated that his mind had chosen to drag up _that_ image. Goku was utterly oblivious about that kind of thing; he couldn't seem to wrap his little simian brain around the concept that there were certain things you just didn't do where someone else might catch you at it.

His own hand was hot on the bare skin of his abdomen. Hakkai had been_magnanimous_ enough to declare he no longer had to wear the damn rib girdle while he slept, and Sanzo was glad for it. He felt for the mending ribs and prodded them masochistically, testing their tenderness with a grimace.

Accelerated healing, heightened senses...and he could still smell the monkey so strongly it was almost a taste. He wondered what it was like for Goku, immersed in so many odors, the scents of their bodies day after day, and whether he ever found it as unbearably intimate as Sanzo did. He could have died happily without having been subjected to the olfactory translation of that leer the kappa had sent in Hakkai's direction at dinner. Ugh.

Goku rolled over onto him again, and when the brunet's leg landed across his stomach Sanzo gritted his teeth and grabbed that ankle. _Of all the stupid--_

"Sanzooo," he whined in his sleep, and Sanzo just tightened his grip and yanked--served him right, the little punk. "'s friggin' **hot**," Goku mumbled, ever a master of the obvious, as he came a little more awake with the yanking. Sanzo wondered what the hell he was doing as he stretched out his free leg, groping with his foot, until he managed to catch the zipper of the tent flap between his toes.

With a little tugging it came open easily enough, and the rush of cool air was so nice that the blond was almost mollified enough to release Goku's leg. He didn't, though, and he lay there and stared up at the sloping canvas ceiling, frowning at the smell of Gojyo smoking one of his Marlboros.

"Sanzo, leggo," Goku finally yawned, giving his leg a half-hearted shake.

"Not if you're just going to kick me again."

"I won't," he promised, but Sanzo knew as soon as he fell back asleep all bets would be off.

In the end, he held on.

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He was having a great dream that they were at an autumn festival in town; Hakkai had already disappeared with Gojyo to check out a drinking contest, so Sanzo had given him the Gold Card and told him he could have anything he wanted to eat, "within reason." But Sanzo seemed to be in a good mood, so Goku was pretty sure he could stretch that a little beyond 'reason,' when he came halfway awake to Sanzo's hand still latched around his ankle, hard enough to hurt, and a disappointing lack of mooncakes and fried sweet bean buns.

And he wasn't sure what woke him, because everything was quiet, and anyway, Sanzo had once said that he could sleep through anything, including an attack by youkai. Goku was pretty sure this was an exaggeration, but he did sleep though Gojyo drawing all over him with marker often enough--and _**crap**_ that smell wasn't coming from him, was it? Sanzo would _kill_ him, then kick his dead body out of the tent! And it was friggin' cold out there! He quickly reached between his legs to check. To his relief, he wasn't hard, but...

"S'nzo?" he yawned, rubbing at an eye with the heel of his hand. Reaching out blindly, Goku shook his shoulder. "Are you--"

The guy freaked the crap out of him when his eyes flew open and he shot into a sitting position with a gasp, "Whoa!" Goku yelped, and then Sanzo was fighting him, pushing and pulling all at once until he was flat on his back with Sanzo above him, holding him down, and what the hell just happened??

"Sanzo, it's just me," he insisted, and just in case, he made sure not to grab for the other male or make any sudden movements as he carefully pressed his hands down flat at his sides.

"You...!" Sanzo sounded super-pissed-annoyed, but Goku was used to _that_, and it was good because it meant Sanzo recognized him. He just really hoped Sanzo got off him soon, because that smell--what enough exposure to Gojyo had taught him to think of as the 'wanting-sex' smell--coming from the older man was making his head swim and his insides squirm, and, well, pretty soon Sanzo was gonna really have something to be pissed at him about.

And he couldn't help it, just thinking about it made his legs twitch, all on their own. They pressed into the outside of Sanzo's thighs just the littlest bit without him meaning them to, and Sanzo...and Sanzo _rolled_ against him with his hips, and if that hadn't been enough to get him totally hard, the super-obvious hard-on in Sanzo's jeans would've done it for sure.

Sanzo's breath was hot and labored against his neck, and if Goku hadn't meant for his legs to tighten around Sanzo, he _definitely_ didn't mean to for his own hips to push back. But his body wasn't listening to him anymore, and when the blond continued to rock into him with slow, tense movements, Goku's hands shot to Sanzo's upper arms and gripped firmly. He bit his tongue to keep quiet as Sanzo's eyes slid shut, his brow furrowed just slightly and his mouth open a little, because the look on Sanzo's face was so... He'd never seen that expression before, but it looked good on Sanzo. It made his heart thump funnily against his ribs.

If this was what it felt like, doing something like this with another person, Goku thought maybe he owed Gojyo an apology--he was shaking and panting and starting to sweat, Sanzo smelled really, really good, and Goku's fingers itched to touch the man's hair, his skin, his mouth. Sanzo made a breathless "hah" noise and leaned a little closer, like maybe he'd heard the thought, and Goku couldn't take it anymore, his fingernails bit into Sanzo's biceps as it built up in him like a hot, tight, shivery ball of--

Sanzo stiffened against him suddenly and went completely still. Goku groaned, he'd been so close, and his hips nudged the blond's hopefully when Sanzo's eyes got really big all of a sudden--holy crap, had he still been asleep this whole time?!--and he jerked back. They stared at each other for a long, mortifyingly awkward moment, until Goku licked his lips nervously.

"San--?"

Sanzo pulled away from him so fast, he was gone and out of the tent before Goku realized it, and then the brunet was left alone with his confused thoughts and a hard-on that didn't want to go away, not when he could still smell Sanzo on him and all around him. Sanzo wasn't gonna come back, not when he'd looked so totally shocked and...horrified, yeah, that was the word. Sucky as that idea was, Goku's body was still tight and throbbing, and lying on his stomach with his face buried tightly against folded arms, he rubbed himself to a messy, sticky finish.

_This isn't good_, he thought, over-warm and pleasantly drowsy, his mind fuzzy, and his bones felt like jelly. Sanzo hated perverts. And even though it wasn't his fault, Sanzo would probably figure Goku did something to him in his sleep and never trust him to share a room with him ever again.

His last thought, before drifting into feverish sleep, was that he hadn't known Sanzo could smell like that--but he liked it.

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Gojyo let Hakkai prod him towards the far side of the tent, "Two hours already?" he asked drowsily, but it wasn't much of a 'far side' when rolling from his stomach onto his back took him there.

"Sanzo sent me back. He insisted on taking watch for the remainder of the night," the brunet offered by way of explanation as he settled down beside him. There was something about the way he said it, half-concerned, half-bemused, but it was way too late at night for this shit, and Gojyo purposefully took the statement at face value.

"Okay," he mumbled, grasping sleepily for those warm, strong limbs until he found an arm and the attached shoulder and pulled Hakkai to him--why the hell was _he_ supposed to care? If Sanzo wanted to sit up all night, far be it from him to try to convince the monk otherwise.

Hakkai was a very comfortable sort of guy to hold onto, even with his pet having wedged himself up under Gojyo's chin in an attempt to squeeze into the crook of Hakkai's neck. Gojyo was drifting back to sleep, the unpleasant pressure of sharp little dragon toenails aside, when Hakkai made that thoughtful noise in his throat.

"He was barefooted, too."

Gojyo was about to ask what this riveting bit of information had to do at all with his trying to get some well-deserved sleep when he decided he just didn't want to know. "Sanzo's a big boy. He can take care of himself," he pointed out instead, and Hakkai had the tent flap separated with two fingers, squinting out towards their campfire and presumably Mr. I Walk Alone himself, so Gojyo tugged him back down.

"I know," Hakkai replied absent-mindedly as he toyed with the ends of Gojyo's hair, but Gojyo figured that wasn't going to stop him from being curious.

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"According to the map, there's a town near the foot of those mountains," Hakkai announced, pointing through the windshield. "We should be able to restock our supplies there before continuing across, but..." He hesitated.

"But what?" asked Gojyo, stretched out in the front seat with his arms folded behind his head, and it was a shame he likely wouldn't be able to enjoy his 'seat of power' much longer; Gojyo was a much more charming seatmate than Sanzo no matter how you looked at it, and the lack of backseat bickering had been a welcome change.

"There's the possibility we may have to back-track several hundred miles," he finally informed them, and he steadfastly ignored the groans and whines of disappointment. "The town is further north than our route should be taking us, and the mountains don't seem to be passable at that point. At any rate," he continued, glancing into the rearview mirror to gauge Sanzo's reaction, "we need food and two more tents."

"Food," Goku repeated urgently as he tugged at the blond's sleeve.

"And cigarettes," Sanzo agreed, looking grim.

"And a new map," Gojyo added, turning the one in his hands every which-way. "This one only goes as far as the mountain range."

"It_was_ one of the more reliable ones," Hakkai sighed wistfully.

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"Holy shit," Gojyo muttered under his breath, pausing to stare as Sanzo pistol-whipped one demon, sent his fist crashing into the face of another without missing a beat, and weirder than the fact that the lazy monk was actually engaging in hand-to-hand was the creepy grin on his face as he did it. The sight was distracting enough that he only narrowly avoided a club to the head, then a swipe of claws to his chest, and he had to pay attention to his own adversaries long enough to swing Shakujou in a wide arc over his head, tearing limbs asunder.

"Hakkai..." he called warily, tipping his head over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of green from the corner of his eye, "is that normal?" he wanted to know.

It was a few minutes before the other man was able to make his way over to him through the legion of youkai, and when he threw his back against the redhead's he was just slightly out of breath. Was it wrong that Gojyo found that kind of hot, despite the fact that they were fighting just to keep their heads on their shoulders?

"Are you referring to Sanzo's resort to a more physical brand of violence," he asked finally, "or the fact that his movements are uncannily in synch with Goku's?"

And now that Hakkai had mentioned it, it **was** a little eerie the way Sanzo would duck just enough in just the right direction to avoid the backswing of Nyoi-bo behind him, or the way Goku would turn suddenly to deliver a roundhouse kick to whatever demon had been sent stumbling his way by the monk's elbow or knee, all without exchanging a word or even looking at each other.

"Do they even realize they're doing it?" Gojyo wondered, sufficiently weirded out, and he hardly noticed when Hakkai pushed back against him to make enough room between himself and the oncoming youkai to release a qi blast; he just went with the motion, and used the opportunity to lash out with the back end of his weapon and cut down a demon which had been brought into reach.

"I doubt it," Hakkai panted, throwing himself slightly to the side so they twisted, and Gojyo brought up Shakujou to block the downward swing of the sword aimed at his head without thinking.

It took Sanzo's gun being knocked out of his hand to remind him the man was still recovering from some pretty heavy damage, and he was about to shout a warning to the kid, who was nearer Sanzo than him or Hakkai when the priest _**flipped backwards**_ on his uninjured arm to retrieve it, and he nearly had a coronary.

"Since when has he been able to do THAT?!" he demanded shrilly. Hakkai laughed behind him, but it sounded unsettled.

"It looks as if Sanzo is full of surprises."

_In bed_, Gojyo mentally added, amazed, and silently pleaded that the blond do it again. _Please, oh please, Sanzo-sama..._

Whether Hakkai had somehow picked up on the thought or not, he hardly thought_that_much force was necessary to knock him out of the way of the next blade directed at him, and he was about to complain when he realized the last of their attackers had been taken care of.

"Back in the jeep," Sanzo ordered, stashing his gun in his robes once more, and damn it if the guy didn't look almost disappointed that the fight was over.

"Jeez, give us a second to catch our breath, you sorry excuse for a monk!" he groused, and who had put a bug up Sanzo's ass, anyway?

"If I had to guess, I'd say you did the least work of all of us," Sanzo retorted as the monkey chased after him towards their ride.

"That's not _normal_," he insisted to Hakkai adamantly, pointing at the two of them accusingly, and Hakkai had to agree.

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Goku screwed up his face. "What's with the chicken coops in front'a everyone's house?"

Shifting his palm along the wheel, Hakkai gently guided Jeep onto the main road which cut through the center of town.

"Maybe the townspeople are big on chicken," Gojyo suggested uninterestedly as he cleaned out an ear with his little finger. "There's not really a lotta vegetation around here to support beef-raising, is there?"

The younger brunet twisted in his seat to stare back at the cages as they disappeared from view, and the movement brought his knee into contact with Sanzo's hip. With a scowl, Sanzo discreetly edged closer to the other side of the jeep.

"But they're all covered up with blankets..." Goku trailed off curiously.

"What do you expect? It's hot as hell out here," the blond grumbled.

"Ten to one says the inn doesn't have air conditioning," Gojyo piped up.

"Do they ever?"

"I'll bet _that_ place has air conditioning," Goku sighed longingly, pointing out what was most likely the palace of whatever ruler had set himself up here, located a little ways up the mountain. The complex was certainly large and pretentious enough.

When they finally pulled up to the inn, Goku and Gojyo didn't waste any time jumping from the vehicle. He and Hakkai followed at a more sedate pace, and narrowly avoided getting dumped to the ground with the rest of their luggage.

"The hell?" Sanzo demanded, frowning irritably at the little dragon as it perched itself on their qi-healer's shoulder.

"It was a long drive," Hakkai commented with a mildly quelling look. "And it _is_ rather warm today."

Of course, the inn was not air conditioned, but there were a few electric fans in the lobby--one in front of which Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dick were currently jostling for position.

"Get your own!" Goku growled, giving the redhead a shove that only earned him an elbow in return.

"I saw it first, chibi-chimp!"

"Liar!"

"Go cry to someone who cares," Gojyo sneered, and it would forever remain a mystery what stunningly spectacular comeback the teen wouldn't have come up with, because Sanzo chose that moment to smack the two of them across the backs of their skulls with one fierce swipe of the _harisen_.

"Ah ha, four rooms, please," Hakkai requested at the front desk with an apologetic laugh, but Sanzo was fully aware that it was the sight of the Gold Card which would smooth things over better than Hakkai's manners ever could.

"I'm terrible sorry sir," the girl behind the counter murmured with a contrite bow, "but we only have double rooms left..." She held out two keys, and Hakkai's eyebrows rose with surprise, and what Sanzo decided to interpret as feigned disappointment.

"Oh, well, that's perfectly alright, I suppose--" he started to say, until the blond reached around him and snatched one of the keys from the woman.

"We'll take it," he told her, and turned to walk down the hallway. "You three can share."

"What?!" Gojyo exploded indignantly. "That's not fair, you bastard!"

Scoffing, Sanzo lifted a hand negligently without looking back. "Go cry to someone who cares."

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It was amazing how quickly the two of them overcame their differences when Hakkai mentioned the word "shopping."

"Aw, but Hakkai, they've actually got a bar here--a _real_one! We've been on the road all day, and it's so hot, I was just gonna..." He trailed off at the unimpressed look he received, and Hakkai turned a stern glance on Goku next.

"I, er, well...didn't you see all the food stands along the side'a the main street?? An' we've been eating crappy canned food for the past couple'a days, and I'm _starving_!" He clutched at his stomach with both hands, as if this visual would help his case against the older brunet.

Hakkai pressed his lips together disapprovingly.

"So you see?" Gojyo wheedled, and Hakkai could practically see the wheels turning in that pretty head; he knew where this was going. "It's no use takin' either of us, 'cuz I'll just be on the lookout for a cold beer, and the bottomless pit here will be throwing two of everything into the basket, and we'll really be more of a hindrance than any help."

"Yeah," Goku agreed sheepishly, and Hakkai noticed his attention was already drawn towards the window, through which the various vendors outside could be heard advertising their goods.

Sighing wearily, Hakkai shared a look with Hakuryuu, but the little dragon was no help. He merely burrowed himself deeper into the nest Hakkai had made for him from his shoulder sash with a sleepily disgruntled 'kyuu.'

"One hour," he finally conceded, and hoped they wouldn't be able to get themselves into too much trouble by then. "But if you two are gone longer and the shops have closed, you'll be doing the shopping early tomorrow morning by yourselves," he assured them. "_With a list._"

"Yeah-yeah, one hour," Gojyo promised, deftly snatching Sanzo's Amex from between his fingers. The redhead leaned forward with a grin--to kiss him, Hakkai realized belatedly--and he averted his face at the last moment.

"Gojyo," he murmured, clearing his throat meaningfully, and gestured with a flick of his eyes towards Goku, who was standing by the door with one hand on the knob and staring at them openly.

With a small noise of frustration, Gojyo took a half-step back. "...Yeah, okay, I get it," he muttered, not looking at Hakkai, and shifted to move around him. Unwilling to let it go at that, the brunet touched his arm as he passed, squeezing gently, and shot Gojyo a look that begged understanding.

"Hey, I get it," he insisted, and that grin returned, faintly.

"Let's gooo," Goku groaned impatiently.

"Keep yer shorts on, jeez!" the half-demon retorted, exasperated, and Hakkai breathed a sigh of relief when he felt him trail a hand briefly over his back before striding out of the room after the teen.

"One hour!" he reminded them as the door slammed, and wondered if it was really such a good idea after all. Hopefully, it would allow them to burn off their extra energy before dinner; Sanzo seemed less inclined to put up with their childish squabbles than usual.

"It must be the heat," he mused. That was bound to make anyone irritable.

Hakuryuu only 'kyuu'ed haughtily and tucked himself more firmly under a wing.

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Hakkai didn't say anything, just eyed him reproachfully, and he figured it had something to do with the fact that he was obviously showered, but still wearing the same filthy jeans he'd worn all week.

"They're the only pair I've got," he reminded the man, and leisurely turned a page of the newspaper spread on the table in front of him.

"They'll have to be washed sometime," Hakkai insisted as he added he blond's laundry to the basket in his arms--and where the hell had he gotten that, anyway?--but Sanzo merely flicked ash from the tip of his cigarette and reached for his mug of tea without looking up.

"I'll need a second pair, before that." He hadn't asked what had happened to the jeans he'd been wearing when he was attacked, and he wasn't going to.

"...I'm sure we have a spare pair of khakis somewhere," Hakkai offered with a perfectly straight face. Sanzo grimaced; he could take a hint.

"I'll buy some jeans before we leave town," he grunted. Hakkai made an 'I thought so' sort of noise and Sanzo considered the conversation over, when the other man pinned him with a searching gaze.

"I've been meaning to ask..." he began in that not-so-casual manner which made Sanzo have to resist the urge to roll his eyes, "whether you've noticed any other strange effects due to Goku's blood?"

Sanzo certainly didn't flinch. Didn't suck in a sharp breath from between his teeth, didn't grimace or flush, and his hands didn't shake as he turned another page of the paper, but all the same, he imagined he could feel the weight of Hakkai's solicitous gaze. _Mind your own goddamn business_ he wanted to snap, but it was Hakkai's business, after a fashion, and he was only asking because of earlier that afternoon and his concern that Sanzo would "overdo it."

So it'd been a while since he'd had the chance to stretch his limbs, to feel the bruise of flesh and crack of bone beneath his knuckles or the butt of his gun, and maybe he'd gotten carried away. The back-flip had probably been a bit much.

But it would've been plain paranoia to think Hakkai knew about what happened in that tent last night. Or the shower, ten minutes ago, for that matter, or the way

_his hand wrapped firmly around his cock and the back of his skull pressed hard against the tile as he gasped for breath, it'd been too goddamn long since he'd had more than two seconds' privacy, but the muscles of his thighs were trembling, they wouldn't hold his weight much longer, and when he reached between his legs to tug at his balls he definitely wasn't remembering the scent of Goku's skin in such close quarters, the feel of an unmistakable erection straining at the flimsy cotton of the brunet's shorts, and _

he'd tried to convince himself that things had only gone as far as they did with Goku because he'd been more than half-asleep at the time.

Coming three times in the course of a fifteen minute shower most likely qualified as a "strange effect" as far as Hakkai was concerned, but Sanzo would bite off and swallow his own tongue before mentioning**that**.

As for the rest...if he'd gained an unhealthy satisfaction from sinking a fist or knee into body after body and feeling them give way so easily under the force of it, that hardly meant he was any bigger a degenerate than those three he was stuck traveling with. And who could blame him, after a whole week where if he hadn't been unconscious or splinted, he was fucking tied to the back seat of the jeep?

There was no good reason to believe the stupid monkey's blood had anything to do with it.

"No," Sanzo assured him, ashing his cigarette again before replacing it between his lips, "but I'll let you know."

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"C'mon, it's almost been an hour," Gojyo sighed, running a hand through his hair as they stepped out into the late afternoon sunlight. "(Damn, you'd'a thought it've started to cool down by now...)"

"Hold on," Goku insisted. He paused to glance thoughtfully down the alley beside the bar which led to the residential part of town. "I wanna see what's in those cages."

"Ugh, it's probably chickens, you pea-brain. Chickens!" Gojyo called out after him as he took off at a fast trot, and the other man made some grumbling noises, but eventually followed. Which was fine with Goku. It'd just take a second, and he had to sit there and wait for Gojyo to finish his third beer--and he was pretty sure _three_ beers hadn't been part of Hakkai's deal.

Goku didn't hear any chickens, but he did hear a little kid crying somewhere, and he stopped short to hide behind the corner of the last house on the block. As he watched a woman put something into the covered coop on her porch, then pull out an empty dish, he heard Gojyo come up behind him.

"If we get back late and have to do the shopping ourselves, I'm makin' you carry everything," the redhead threatened. Leaning over his shoulder, Gojyo peered down the street without much interest. "Feeding the chickens. I rest my case."

Goku shot him an unimpressed frown. "What kinda chickens eat sweet-bean buns? Jeez."

It was silent for a moment as Gojyo blinked down at him, "How the heck did you--?" but by that time the woman had gone back inside and shut the door. "Hey!" Gojyo stage-whispered after him when he dashed around the corner, and he managed to duck behind one of the cages without being seen.

"If it's just chickens, what's the big deal?" Goku reasoned with a shrug of his shoulders, and the older male rolled his eyes before trudging over.

"Well if it's you, people could think you're trying to eat 'em," came the retort.

"Why would I wanna eat--" One side of the blanket flipped back with a quick flick of his wrist and he stared in shock.

"What the hell is--" Gojyo cleared his throat, and this time his voice was less shaky and more pissed. "What the _fuck_, man?"

Goku still couldn't make his mouth work, but glancing down the street he could see house after house, almost every one, had a cage on the stoop, and that wasn't even counting the next street over, or the next.

"H-holy crap, there must be, like--"

"One thousand, one hundred and eleven?" suggested a voice from the doorway.

Goku jumped to his feet.

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tbc...

:laughs: My login code today was 393. I sense good things. :d


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